All the Buildings in Sydney: James Gulliver Hancock's obsession with drawing his city

By Jacqui Taffel

James Gulliver Hancock says his obsession with drawing buildings is a bit like trainspotting. He can walk or ride or drive past a building, perhaps one he has passed many times before, then suddenly notice something about it that makes him stop and look again. If he likes what he sees, he will make note of it with a sketch or a photo. Back at his studio, he reconstructs the building with an illustration that is not exactly like the original, but captures its essence and personality.

The first house he lived in at Balmain by James Gulliver Hancock.

He started doing it when he moved to New York City in 2010. It began as a diary of his days, a way to map the sprawling grid of streets, a project to work on as he found his feet in the city's intense creative landscape. He started a blog, and as it filled up with more and more buildings, it began to attract attention, first online, then in newspapers, and finally as a book, All the Buildings* in New York (*That I've Drawn So Far).

Three years later, after many artistic adventures and career-boosting commissions, he returned to Sydney. Driving to Clovelly where he and his wife, singer Lenka Kripac, were moving with their baby son, he was in tears. Not of joy.

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All the Buildings* in Sydney (*That I've Drawn So Far) by James Gulliver Hancock.

"I was hating it, I didn't want to be here at all," he says. "I'd left all these amazing influences in New York and opportunities."

Sydney felt like a country town in comparison; returning home seemed a backwards step. Fortunately, Hancock says, "I got over it." One of the things that helped was starting a new obsessive project that has produced another book, All the Buildings* in Sydney (*That I've Drawn So Far).

He began with his childhood home in Balmain, a characterful sandstone cottage built by eminent architect Edmund Blacket, who also designed Sydney University's grand old buildings. Hancock drew all the other places he had lived, the places his friends lived and other places they suggested. He walked around different neighbourhoods, spotted candidates from his car, and tackled the blockbusters: the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, Sydney Tower, Luna Park. It helped him reconnect to the city, looking at it with fresh eyes and reconciling his past with the new identity he had formed overseas.

"It's hard sometimes returning to a place and walking around old ghosts, so drawing was definitely therapeutic in that way, by paying more attention than normal to those ultra-familiar spaces," he says.

Sydney Tower by James Gulliver Hancock.

Some of his choices for the book might seem surprising – the ominous UTS tower block on Broadway, for instance, where he studied visual communications. Blues Point Tower is in there too. Hancock enjoys tackling unpopular buildings and contributing a new perspective.

"I hated all that brutalism stuff before I started drawing buildings; now I love it," he says. "I don't love interacting with it daily, but as a sculpture, they're amazing."

UTS Tower by James Gulliver Hancock.

His drawings, though instantly recognisable, have a cartoon buoyancy to them, with scribbles and squiggles and ink splats, like a sketch book.

He also uses collage, and often finds mistakes look better than reality, which happened when he was drawing the crane at Garden Island. Trying to recreate the struts, he drew the wrong kind of triangle, but decided it looked better that way and did them all like that.

Garden Island crane by James Gulliver Hancock.

"There's a little whirlwind world that happens around the drawing you're trying to do, it gives it a lot of extra personality."

He has reconciled with his hometown that, it turns out, has its own opportunities: his local commissions include painting a mural last year for the City of Sydney's bicycle parking station. Overseas jobs still come in, such as designing the artwork for a New York music festival or packaging for a US gourmet burrito chain, and he goes back to New York each year.

Marrickville building by James Gulliver Hancock.

Hancock's obsessive urge to draw began when he was a child; he was happier at home making models and painting than going to parties. As an adult, he gets cranky if he doesn't draw every day.

It comes from the desire to know everything, he says, "to overcome the infinity of everything through drawing and logging ... Every drawing feels like I've gathered a bit more into my understanding of how things are."